English as a Second Language

  “Go on then,” Toby ordered me. “Get dressed. Do your girl things. We haven’t got all night, Brennan. It’s already eight.”

  “I have to take a shower,” I said. They both groaned.

  “No you don’t,” Toby said. “You’re fine.”

  “Don’t be such a girl,” Jason agreed.

  I stared at them. “I actually happen to be a girl.”

  “Not really,” Toby said, and grinned. “Aren’t you turning twenty-seven soon? I reckon that makes you an old woman.”

  “Get out,” I responded, smiling. “Right now.”

  When you’ve been drinking all day, have a nap in the middle of it, and then start up again, you have a long period where the alcohol doesn’t seem to affect you at all. If anything, you feel a little hungover. But if you keep going, you eventually reach a point where all that alcohol suddenly hits you. Hard. If you’re not careful, it can take your knees out from under you.

  With this in mind, having experienced that loss of knees before and to my detriment, I had decided to limit my intake. I was sipping my second pint in as many hours, while Jason and Toby roared about some British television star and practically fell out of their chairs.

  “You’re both idiots,” I informed them when they’d righted themselves. Jason was trying to steady himself. Toby glared at me.

  “That’s the trouble with you, Brennan,” he said. “Too much of a Yank to appreciate British humor.”

  “Oh my God,” I groaned. “Is this going to be another conversation about how Americans can’t understand irony and how the British just love irony and no one in the entire world, even the world colonized by the British, could possibly understand British humor?” I gestured with my cigarette. “Dunkirk spirit, God save the queen, rise of the Raj, England is cool, and the U.S. sucks?” They were both staring. I smiled. “Because I can’t have that conversation again,” I said. “I really can’t.”

  “Alex,” Jason said with great deliberation. “You’re utterly off your head.”

  “Dunkirk spirit?” Toby echoed in amazement. “Do you even know what Dunkirk spirit is?”

  “Something to do with the war effort,” I sighed. “Just for the record, you are aware that World War Two ended in the nineteen forties, right? Last century, I hasten to add? And not yesterday?”

  “You might want to take a care to keep your voice down,” Toby retorted, with sudden fury. “As you’d be surprised how long it takes people to get over being bombed daily for years.”

  He and I locked eyes, and suddenly we weren’t talking about the war at all, at least not World War Two. I didn’t exactly know what we were talking about, but I felt temper wash through me. Toby’s dark eyes were unreadable again, but I knew anger when I saw it, even if I couldn’t translate the cause. I opened my mouth to light into him.

  “Bombings?” Suzanne’s voice washed over us from above.

  Toby jerked, and I looked up. She was standing there with a smile, a drink, and several of her housemates.

  “You may want to run away, Suzanne,” Jason said, waving his cigarette. “There has been a great deal of alcohol and very little sense at this table for some time.”

  Toby smiled thinly and shot me another dark look.

  I leaned back and set about ignoring him.

  Wow, I thought, leaning over the sink and closer to the bathroom mirror, I really should have taken that shower. I looked far past my sell-by date. The fluorescent lighting wasn’t doing wonders for my skin tone, either. Who had ever decided that fluorescent lights belonged in bathrooms?

  “I thought I saw you come in here,” Suzanne said brightly, appearing in the doorway behind me. I glanced at her through the mirror. Her hair gleamed, red and shiny.

  “And you were right,” I replied. Lightly. I straightened and smiled. Politely.

  “Can I ask you something?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, rather than you just did, which was my impulse.

  “Are you and Toby in a fight?” Her green eyes were narrowed and fixed on mine.

  I washed my hands and turned slowly. “Not that I’m aware of,” I said slowly. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because there seems to be a lot of tension between you two,” she pointed out. As if maybe I’d missed the surliness and the fact that we weren’t really speaking? Thanks, Suzanne.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said lightly. Then, all I Know Him So Well: “Toby can be pretty moody.”

  Was that deliberate? Just to see her frown? To make her wonder? I wasn’t too proud to admit that it was, and that it worked. I was sick of her.

  I was sick of him too, when it came to that, I reflected. I stepped around her without another word and headed out of the bathroom.

  Back at the table. Suzanne watched Toby closely, sitting as much in his lap as she could without actually leaving her own chair. Excellent way to keep that secret, I thought sourly. No one will ever know the truth. Stupid girl. Toby, meanwhile, had taken a turn into surliness and was slumped back in his chair, one small step away from outright sulking. Jason was holding court and entertaining Suzanne’s housemates, many of whom, I couldn’t help but notice, were giving me some version of the hairy eyeball. Suzanne’s minions, I presumed. I was watching with mild interest. When Suzanne’s narrow gaze slid away from Toby and over to rest on me, with a dangerous light I recognized, I decided it was past time to call it a night. A very long, very odd, very bad night, and it was barely ten o’clock.

  “I’m off,” I announced.

  “Why?” Toby demanded.

  “Because I want to go,” I said, not looking his way.

  I waved at Jason and headed for the door. Toby caught up with me just outside. He pulled me to the side of the entrance and glowered at me. We were eye to eye with my four-inch heels on, and I was pleased I didn’t have to look up at him.

  “You’re just rushing off? Without wondering whether or not you’re ruining anyone else’s night?” He was outraged. I scowled at him.

  “What the hell do you care if I want to go home?” I demanded. “Go hang out with your secret girlfriend. I’m going to sleep. This entire evening has been exhausting.”

  “You only ever think of yourself, don’t you, Alex?” His voice had turned cold. I gaped at him.

  “What does that mean? I just want to go home, Toby. How that’s even your concern—”

  “You can do whatever you like, can’t you? Never thinking about anyone else.”

  “I’m sorry,” I hissed at him, in that British way that meant I wasn’t sorry at all. “Is this you I’m supposed to be thinking about? What would you like me to think about you?”

  “This isn’t about me,” he snapped.

  “Then what are you so angry about?” I demanded. “Why are you in my face? Why don’t you run back inside and snuggle up with Suzanne?”

  His fists actually clenched at his sides. I had never seen that look on his face before.

  “At least she cares about someone besides herself,” he said coldly. I laughed one of those really mean and obnoxious laughs.

  “Sure,” I said, in a nasty little voice. “She cares. But which one of us does she care about? Having you or hurting me?”

  He opened his mouth as if the breath had been taken from him. I felt a sudden shame course through me. Another long moment passed as we stared at each other.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I whispered.

  “Alex,” he said, very quietly. “I—”

  “Toby?” Suzanne appeared in the pub doorway. She looked back and forth between us. “Alex? What are you guys doing out here?”

  “I’m going home,” I said tightly. To Suzanne, still holding Toby’s gaze.

  Toby glanced at Suzanne and then back at me. His mouth moved, but he didn’t speak. His eyes were dark and troubled and I didn’t want to care.

  “Are you okay, Alex?” Suzanne asked, a little bit sharply.

  “I’m just going home,” I bit out, and bolted.
br />   “You sound exhausted,” Michael said. “And really weird.”

  “I’m sort of drunk,” I said. “I’m actually way beyond drunk.”

  “Uh-huh,” Michael said.

  “I’m in that bizarre in-between place. I think I may be simultaneously drunk and hungover.”

  “How pleasant for you,” Michael said. “Aren’t you turning twenty-seven in a matter of days? Just under two weeks? I’m just asking.”

  “Are you questioning my qualifications for adulthood?” I asked, grinning. “I’m deeply offended.”

  “You’re lucky there are no tests and licenses.”

  “Because you think you’d pass with flying colors?” I scoffed. “Please.”

  “What you fail to understand, Alex,” Michael said with great dignity, “is that I am perfectly content within my arrested development. You’re the one who worries over the transition to adulthood. I couldn’t care less.”

  “That’s food for thought,” I said, and yawned. “But I have to pass out now.”

  Once again, obnoxious pounding woke me. This time I knew it was the door, but there was an echo in my head that warned of impending dehydration and headache. I peered at my watch and nearly burst into tears. Two-thirty in the morning. I’d been asleep for about four hours. I felt like shit.

  “What, in the name of God?” I snarled, yanking open my door.

  Suzanne.

  “We need to talk,” she said urgently.

  I rubbed at my face.

  I noticed evidence of tears on Suzanne’s face and in her swollen eyes. I reflected that it was two-thirty and I was cranky and tired. I reflected upon the fact that when I’d been awake and in the pub, I’d been sick of this shit. And now, rousted from bed in the middle of the night? I was finished.

  “No,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, no. It’s the middle of the night. I’ve been asleep for hours. You’re going to have to wait until tomorrow.” I slammed the door in her face, kind of enjoying her wide-mouthed look of surprise.

  I crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over my head.

  Outside my door, I heard blessed silence. Then the front door slammed. I was congratulating myself on putting my foot down when I heard feet tramping up the stairs. Voices started up, voices I told myself that I didn’t recognize. Directly on the other side of my door.

  A few moments went by. Then my phone rang.

  “What is going on?” It was Cristina, sounding wired and annoyed. They were no doubt interrupting her studying.

  “I really don’t know,” I snapped. “Suzanne just appeared at my door and now there are people carrying on in the hall. All I want to do is sleep.” I heard her phone clank down on her desk and then, through the phone and through the walls, heard her door whine as she opened it a flight above me.

  “I think it is Toby,” she told me when she returned to the phone. “I can see his head. Would you like me to tell them to leave?”

  I really would. But I was angry. “That’s okay,” I muttered. “I’m all over it.”

  I swung back out of bed and stalked across the room.

  “Hey!” I shouted, pulling open the door.

  Toby and Suzanne froze in mid-fight.

  “Alex,” Toby began.

  “Get the hell out of my house,” I snapped. “Now.”

  “But—”

  “Just go,” I said. “I don’t even know how you got in.”

  “I hate you!” Suzanne shrieked suddenly. It wasn’t clear who she was talking to, as her eyes were unfocused. I heard Cristina, somewhere above us, shout something in angry Spanish.

  “You are disturbing my housemates,” I said coldly, glaring at her.

  Suzanne turned and tore down the stairs. We heard the door slam.

  “You can go too,” I told Toby. “I can’t believe you would bring your bullshit into my house in the middle of the night. What is wrong with you? What could you possibly be thinking?”

  He looked at me. It was a long look. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Neither do I,” I said, but with slightly less venom. “Can I go back to sleep now? Or are you going to cause more trouble?”

  “She came over here,” he said. “I tried to stop her.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  “I’ll go,” he said. “There was a huge scene. She said—”

  “I don’t care what she said!” I snapped at him, venom reborn. “I don’t care about anything but myself, remember?”

  Toby stared at me.

  Another long moment, and then he turned and went.

  I stalked back to my bed and punched my pillow, then lay down and yanked the covers up around me. And was furious to discover that suddenly, I was wide awake.

  Fourteen

  I threw myself with frightening intensity into my dissertation. I became Academic Girl. I scowled at texts and blinked my way through articles and pounded out line after line on my computer. I was officially accepted into the university’s PhD program, thanks to the proposal I hardly remembered cobbling together. I accepted that news with a definite lack of enthusiasm. Okay, I thought. But what do I know about research papers? The only way to learn was to keep working obsessively on the one in front of me.

  Things kept happening, of course, but not to me. It was a relief. One fine night, Cristina’s John got incredibly drunk and declared his feelings for her. Outside her window at about two in the morning. Cristina was unimpressed. And it was David the Physicist who eventually came to collect poor John and drag him off home, not without a searing moment of eye contact through Cristina’s window.

  “Which was almost too much,” Cristina moaned. “Why does he have this power over me?”

  John woke the next morning with the expected hangover combined with deep shame, and naturally felt too embarrassed to talk to Cristina. He further felt that the best expression of his embarrassment was to be hideously rude to her whenever he ran into her thereafter. Best way to hide the humiliation.

  “He is a complete tosser!” Cristina shouted.

  “In his defense,” I murmured philosophically, “that’s pretty much the way I operate.”

  Cristina only eyed me, and filched a new cigarette.

  I spent a lot of quality time shuffling around my house like an old woman, in my pajamas and my ratty flannel shirt, which doubled as a kind of grunge-era bathrobe, and sometimes pretended I wasn’t there when anyone knocked on my door. I would peer through my little spy hole, hold my breath, and wait for them to go away. This is not necessarily my real life, I told myself. And the sooner I finish this thing, the sooner I can decide what my real life really is.

  Toby went home for a while to study, I discovered via Jason, who went to take a holiday with his girlfriend in Spain. Sometimes I went out, but only with my housemates. I turned twenty-seven quietly, and celebrated with a girls’ night out. The school year had ended for the undergraduates, and they’d left the campus and small village deserted. All that remained was the tiny graduate community. I had realized with a single glance around me that I recognized every single person in the campus pubs and around campus, for better or worse. Anonymity was completely out of the question with no heaving undergraduate masses to hide in. We took my birthday to the city center.

  “I thought that was you.”

  All three of us twisted around at the sound of a posh British voice. And there he was, with a broad smile across his face and his eyes still dark and intense.

  “David,” Cristina said, in an odd voice. She forced a smile, as Melanie and I exchanged a look that was heavy on raised eyebrows. Neither David nor Cristina noticed.

  “How are you?” Cristina asked, drifting up and onto her feet. David barely spared Melanie or me a glance. He and Cristina began talking, and it was as if the room fell away from the two of them.

  I sucked in a breath. “How wonderfully romantic,” I whispered.

  “Indeed,” Melanie agreed in a similar tone.
r />   We watched them for a moment. If I could see Cristina’s heart in her eyes, I thought, what did David see? Did he care?

  Cristina smiled at us, kind of dreamily, and collected her things. Melanie and I watched quietly.

  “Happy birthday,” Cristina said.

  “Please,” I offered, “make my wish your own.”

  Melanie and I stayed in the pub until closing, and then cracked ourselves up on the bus ride back to campus. As we walked back across the fields in the cool night together, I felt the strangest sense of release. As if I could just let myself go into the dark that was still slightly blue around the edges. It took a long time for the days to end in the English summer. They clung to the sky well into the night.

  We decided to toast my birthday with more wine, and sat in the kitchen near the windows. Melanie was telling me stories of exam breakdowns and bringing me up to speed on the many salacious rumors in the economics community. I was nibbling on the stale Oreos that had come in the last care package, courtesy of my mother, who apparently thought I ate nothing but junk food. Correctly, as it happened. Suddenly the kitchen door was tossed open, and George came rushing in.

  “Don’t tell her I’m here!” he told us. And then, quite improbably, dove into the broom closet.

  Melanie and I stared at each other.

  Seconds later, we both jumped as someone came up and pounded on the window. Someone who was Fiona the Vulture. Melanie and I both attempted to hide our varying expressions of distaste. Melanie was much better at it.

  “All right?” Melanie chirped through the open window.

  “Have you seen George?” Fiona asked, with no attempt whatsoever at politeness.

  “Not tonight,” I lied happily. Fiona had gotten no less vulture-ish in the time since I’d last seen her. If anything, separation from George had made the beak on her all the more pronounced. This close, I noticed that her eyes weren’t actually beady as I’d assumed, but a surprisingly lovely shade of blue. I guessed it was some kind of genetic consolation prize for the nose.